Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) are in essence two sides of the same coin and as with any two services from two different companies in the same market sector there usually exists the potential for confrontation and negativity which can put the client at risk.
Seldom do PPC agencies wish to engage in SEO and content development services, largely as they view such work as time (and therefore labour) intensive but more and more SEO agencies are capturing PPC services, largely owing to their enhanced consultative led strategies as perceived by the end client.
Assuming cost and results are identical then all things being equal superior service will always win out.
It is certainly true that a good marketeer will listen to the client, respect their superior industry knowledge, and develop a strategy that achieves traction towards its objectives, and with SEO and PPC, those end objectives, and the means to achieve them are more intertwined than most would have you believe.
Ask any Google Adwords employee what will bring down your cost per click for a chosen and relevant keyword and whilst you can lower your bid, and see your Adwords appear lower and lower down the results and into obscurity, especially now the sidebar ads have gone, the Google exec will tell you that to retain your PPC campaign performance levels but lower your costs you should “make your ads more relevant!”.
Relevance is everything to Google.
As Google itself says, “A value that’s used to determine your ad position (where ads are shown on a page) and whether your ads will display at all. Ad Rank is calculated using your bid amount, the components of Quality Score (expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience), and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats.”.
So then, if your website and the landing pages of your Google ads are more relevant than the competition, then in addition to lowering your cost per click (CPC) your ad will also rank higher than the competition, and be served first.
Whether you’re working towards better natural/organic Google results (i.e. Search Engine Optimisation) or managing a PPC campaign (i.e. Adwords) the strategy for Google and how to approach it are the same for both methods of attack in that ‘relevance’ and ‘experience’ are the key principles that should be applied in both instances. The better the content and the more relevant it is, the better chance you have that Google will serve up your website/webpage more prominently and so long as the end user experience is positive and there isn’t a big bounce rate, then Google has fulfilled its role in matching the best content for a users given search term.
Yet despite this fundamental principle of Google many PPC agencies don’t seem to be offering much more than setting up the campaign at the outset (with varying degrees of success) and then never logging in again, only for automated reports to tell the client how many clicks have been achieved each month and an invoice for the management percentage on top.
However, as with any percentage based reward incentive, quantity and quality are often at loggerheads.
Putting it another way, the more clicks your site obtains from your outsourced PPC campaign, the bigger the slice for the campaign manager and in reality whether those clicks are relevant to your business and will produce leads or sales (or not) matters not to the campaign manager as they still get the percentage.
SEO v PPC?
As per the theme of this post, when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, i.e. SEO and PPC the two are best looked at as two sides of the same coin and rather than a question of choosing heads or tails, considering and/or employing both will produce a more effective long term strategy, especially for new sites or those which need their Google Quality Score improving.
Whilst PPC will get you website clicks today, it is the strategy and content marketing driven skills of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that will make your PPC campaign more efficient, less expensive and more effective in the short term in delivering Return on Investment (ROI) whilst improving your website’s relevance and quality in Google’s eyes, which will then see your website moving higher in Google’s non paid for (i.e. organic) search results.
The best hope of any online success if your budget permits, is to have multiple opportunities in the same arena and in terms of using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC), having an Adwords result at the top of the page in addition to a natural result at the top of the organic (no ad) search results is considered pole position.
If you’re not in pole position presently its time to put in place a strategy that either gets you there, or manages your budget effectively so that you have to the highest possibility of getting as close to pole position as you can achieve.
Edible is a Liverpool based Content Marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) business working with a broad base of clients from sectors such as business to business and business to consumer retail and services, hospitality, manufacturing, research and also financial and professional services.
If you need some guidance, content writing, help with engaging customers, converting leads, or Liverpool Search Engine Optimsation Services or further afield than Liverpool, simply get in touch for a non obligation evaluation of your website and its potential.
